Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a compound-eye image pickup apparatus including a plurality of arrayed optical systems.
Description of the Related Art
A compound-eye image pickup apparatus achieves a reduction in size of each lens by dividing a single imaging optical system (lenses) included in a typical image pickup apparatus into a plurality of imaging optical systems. However, a conventional compound-eye image pickup apparatus needs a mechanical moving mechanism, and thus an image pickup system increases in size. Accordingly, in the conventional compound-eye image pickup apparatus, it is difficult to add an optical zoom function in which an angle of view for capturing an image can be varied by a method of moving a position of a lens constituting an optical system. Furthermore, previously, a technology of achieving zooming (digital zooming) by image processing by magnifying a desired region in a captured image is known. In this method, a magnification increases with increasing a zoom magnification (zoom power), and a resolution is deteriorated accordingly.
Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2011-55246 discloses an image pickup apparatus in which a short focus (wide-angle) lens unit and a long focus (telephoto) lens unit which are different in an angle of view are disposed to perform photographing so as to include an identical portion of an object. The image pickup apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2011-55246 performs electronic zooming by using a camera with a wide angle of view if the zoom magnification is small, and it performs digital zooming by using a camera with a narrow angle of view if the zoom magnification is large. In this case, a zoom-up image obtained by an image pickup element corresponding to the long focus lens is fitted into a part of a wide image obtained by an image pickup element corresponding to the short focus lens, and accordingly the deterioration of the resolution by the digital zooming is reduced.
However, in the image pickup apparatus disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2011-55246, a depth of field varies depending on lens units having different angles of view, and accordingly, a quality of an image generated by synthesizing a plurality of images is deteriorated when a three-dimensional object image is captured.